Faster

A stretch of Highway 7 runs just uphill of the Speed River. From the guardrail you can see the water moving softly in the evening sun, goldenrod hugging both banks this time of year. We bike this stretch often and catch glimpses of the river and of everything that falls off a vehicle and ends up on the bank below: fragments of car bumpers, chunks of foam, cups, bags, the usual shoulder inventory.

This time we stopped for a quick cleanup, and it didn’t take long to fill two bags.

Both bags came off the shoulder too: one a sturdy fertilizer sack, the other from la Vie en Rose, each doing a second shift as a garbage bag. Life through rose-coloured glasses indeed. Below the slope we’d just cleared, an egret was fishing.

Riding home we found a dump in the woods one street over. This litter didn’t blow out of a car window — someone drove over and placed it there.

We came back with gloves and a bin, the same bin that came out of the Speed River a short way downstream a couple of weeks ago. Somebody had written Faster on the side in marker. It had not been moving fast when we found it, stuck to a branch for who knows how long, but it came out of the Speed, so the name stands. Like the bags, it’s now on its second shift, hauling debris out of the woods.

Sunday, September 20 is World Cleanup Day, and we’re organizing a community cleanup of the Speed River shoreline in downtown Guelph. Let us know if you’re coming so we can pack enough grabbers, gloves and bags. We’ll bring the Faster bin as well to help haul out whatever we find.